RE Watch: Resident Evil (2002)

The year is 2002. Horror movies are back in the mainstream and zombies are re-entering the zeitgeist. The Matrix is influencing every new action movie being produced. Video games are looking like the latest IP gold rush to hit Hollywood. Clearly the next step is for someone to make a live-action movie based on the Resident Evil game series... you might even call it a no brainer. But who can possibly handle the degree of difficulty that comes with adapting such a beloved property? Paul W.S. Anderson, that's who.

Yes, I am already regretting my decision to go back and watch all of the live-action Resident Evil movies. It's not so much that I can't sit through bad movies, it's more that I don't know if I can find all that much to say about them. I am getting the impression that there will not be a whole lot of variation between each movie in the series. And yet, perhaps that is part of the appeal?

The Resident Evil movie franchise has made over $1.2 billion across seven installments, all without a single one earning positive reviews. That is a pretty impressive achievement for Mr. Anderson and his collaborators. I had only seen a couple of these movies previously despite the fact that I am a fan of the Resident Evil games (although admittedly, I didn't really get into the series until Resident Evil 4). Jumping into the first movie now some 24 years later, it's hard to see how it spawned a sequel, let alone five or six.

Usually the first movie in a franchise is the thing that keeps people coming back for more. No matter how bad a sequel gets, there is always the hope that maybe the filmmakers will reclaim the magic of that original film. There should be a great premise, concept or world and a collection of memorable characters that you want to spend time with. This movie has none of those things. The one thing it does have is a cliffhanger ending that leaves you feeling a little bit intrigued, but otherwise, it's pretty dull stuff.

Milla Jovovich plays Alice, a woman who awakens in a mysterious mansion under lockdown without any memory of how she got there. Soon she is joined by a military team who escort her down to a top secret underground facility run by The Umbrella Corporation known as The Hive. It turns out that a genetically engineered virus was "accidentally" released in a lab down there that triggered the facility's artificial intelligence (known as Red Queen) to seal everything off and take extreme measures. Spoiler: Umbrella is up to no good and all of the people down there have now been turned into zombies.

From the outside looking in, I was always confused by the fact that these movies felt more like science-fiction than horror. I get that some of this comes from the genetic experimentation angle but I have to assume there was also a decision made to lean into sci-fi due to current trends and the fact that sci-fi was a bigger draw at the time. It's probably not until the halfway point that any zombies even show up at all. That being said, there are at least a couple of tense sequences where they are surrounded by hordes of zombies that feel less action-y and more reminiscent of something like Dawn of the Dead. Which is, you know, not horrible. (George A. Romero had been initially hired to direct this movie and there is a documentary about his take on the material out there. Maybe I'll check that out at some point.)

That is one of the reasons why the movie is only loosely based on the games and did not feature any characters from the games. I guess it was also intended to be a prequel of sorts, which may explain some of the disconnect. Perhaps most importantly, it was made at a time when comic book fans had not started to run Hollywood, which meant that being faithful to the source material simply was not as much of a priority as it is now. To be fair, this movie does at least feature a mansion, some zombies, some zombie dogs, and a brief mention of the Nemesis program. Oh, and a Licker.

The Licker is a mix of practical and CG effects, but the CG is pretty rough. I'm guessing it looked pretty bad even back in 2002. Speaking of rough CG, there is also a moderately amusing scene where several characters get sliced and diced by some lasers. They use that same cartoony effect also seen at the end of Equilibrium where it takes a few seconds for the body pieces to slide apart. Great stuff. The idea of a laser corridor was added to the Resident Evil 4 video game as a tribute to this scene a few years later. Capcom did also eventually add the Red Queen into the video game canon with The Umbrella Chronicles.

Getting away from the games, the primary selling point of this entire series has got to be Milla Jovovich, although in 2002 I'm not sure that was the case. She had her breakout role with The Fifth Element in 1997 but she hadn't fully transformed into an action star yet because this movie was arguably the turning point. That persona only starts to take shape towards the end of this movie because it takes a while for her memories to return, at which point she magically starts running up walls and kicking ass in slow motion. There is some satisfaction to seeing her come into her own but overall it feels a little more tentative than I expected. I am hoping for more ridiculous bullet time action in future films.

Aside from Milla Jovovich, the rest of the cast is pretty awful and the acting is C-tier level at best (and probably worse in many cases). Some might say that this was done on purpose to try and recreate the cheesy voice acting from the original games but I don't think I buy that. Michelle Rodriguez and James Purefoy are the next biggest stars and in my opinion they aren't much better than the other lesser known actors. I know the military characters are mostly expendable but good god they are boring.